Before Cameron’s BIOS code can achieve full meltdown status, however, things appear to be peachy keen at Cardiff. Joe informs the company’s build team and others that the Cardiff PC prototype has been clocking in a system response time of 396 milliseconds — a staggeringly low number, and the “sweet spot” that allows people to be addicted to using their personal computers.

Rolling with this confidence in his product, Joe gets Ron, a reporter from the Wall Street Quarterly, to visit Cardiff Electric and research a story about the company’s PC venture. Ron, however, quickly shows how unimpressed he is with Joe and Joe’s vision — Ron mentions that he’s at Cardiff as a favor for a colleague, and is wholly unconvinced that Cardiff’s PC will even be remotely able to compete in the marketplace. In fact, he’s considering a takedown piece of sorts that chronicles how Cardiff “flew too close to the sun” (aka IBM) and burned up.

Joe, however, pleads with Ron to check out the office and meet the employees — there’s an “underdog angle,” Joe remarks.

Joe brings Ron to Cameron’s lair to meet the coding protege. Joe had spent the morning imploring Debbie, a Cardiff secretary, to help tidy up Cameron and her workspace so to not embarrass Cardiff in front of the reporter. But when Joe and Ron approach Cameron at her computer station, Cameron is in a panic — her computer is unresponsive, and her cherished BIOS code cannot be retrieved. Her computer has evidently been fried by a vacuum cleaner used to clean up the area.

A scene from Episode 4 of AMC's "Halt and Catch Fire."

Image: AMC

Cameron loses it, breaking down as she realizes how much work has been lost. Gordon and others struggle to find backup disks with the BIOS code, but none work — they all have been wiped of their information. Joe tries to keep the group calm, and Ron watches the entire situation unfold, seeing a story in the BIOS code collapse. He’s found his angle, and it’s incredibly unflattering for Cardiff Electric.

Meanwhile, Bosworth is still struggling to maintain the reins at Cardiff as Joe’s bravado runs show in the office. He meets with Nathan, an old money investor, at Nathan’s ranch where a horse is being put down nearby. Nathan asks Bosworth, “Who’s running things” at Cardiff — Bosworth, or Joe? He notes that “people are starting to talk,” and that Joe’s incident with Lulu at her dinner is making the rounds in gossip conversation.

At Cardiff, Gordon knows who may be able to retrieve the BIOS code — his wife. Donna and Gordon’s marriage continues to be contentious, as Gordon has become an even more inattentive father with his long, grueling hours at Cardiff. Donna, in turn, has had to not only work her full-time job at Texas Instruments (where she has been put on probation), but also pick up the parenting slack. When Gordon is once again unavailable to watch their two daughters, Donna snaps, “I make your world possible.”

But Gordon needs Donna, and Donna — armed with data retrieval expertise — comes to the rescue. With the reporter still present at Cardiff, the team fibs and acts as if Donna is an employee at Cardiff, and not Gordon’s wife who is employed at TI. Donna and Cameron butt heads when she arrives to clean up the BIOS code mess, and Cameron has a full-on panic attack from all of the stress.

After several hours of work, Donna is able to rescue the BIOS code and saves the day. While Donna impressed the men of Cardiff with her data knowhow, Cameron, now calmer, watched Gordon and Donna’s daughters. As she kept them company, the two girls offhandedly mention that Donna and Gordon had called Cameron “white trash” and laughed about it. The comment unhinges Cameron, and she leaves Cardiff in search of revenge.

Cameron hightails it to Donna and Gordon’s house, intent on vandalizing their home as retribution. While inside Donna and Gordon’s living room and wielding a spray paint can, however, Cameron is interrupted by someone with far more lethal intents — a former Cardiff employee whom Gordon had fired in the previous episode. Since losing his job, he has become unstable, and threatens Gordon. Now, things have escalated — he’s broken into Gordon and Donna’s home with shotgun in hand, prepared to make the married couple pay for their “hypocrisy.” With no one but Cameron home, however, his plans never come to fruition.

After successfully retrieving Cameron’s data, Donna takes time to herself in the Cardiff supply area and notices the vacuum again — then, putting two and two together, realizes that Cameron’s work area has no carpet. Why, then, vacuum it? She also finds a stack of floppy disks hidden nearby — Cameron’s backups for the BIOS code.

Donna approaches Joe and calls him out — he orchestrated the entire situation, frying Cameron’s hard drive while keeping the backups on hand the entire time. The whole ordeal was a ploy to get a juicy story about Cardiff out of Ron. Joe doesn’t deny any of this, and instead smirks and tells Donna to not tell anyone, not even her husband.

Donna ultimately extends an olive branch to Cameron after the whole debacle — she tells Cameron that Cameron’s code is “like a piece of music.” Something in Cameron softens, and her hatred for Donna begins to fade. Joe, on the other hand, feels the wrath of Bosworth — indirectly. While driving home from Cardiff, he is pulled over by cops for speeding and promptly beaten for no reason. At the police station, Bosworth arrives and shows how buddy-buddy he is with the cops. Joe, battered and bruised, is set free — this was Bosworth’s way of showing who is running things at Cardiff.

Donna does not heed Joe’s words, and when back at her home, tells Gordon about how the entire BIOS code situation was Joe’s sinister concoction. She worries about whom she and her husband have gotten into bed with — if Joe is capable of doing this, how far will he go?

Gordon absorbs this revelation, but then asks his wife, “Did it work? Is the reporter going to write the story about our PC?” Donna stares back at her husband, shocked, seeing how much he’s drank of Joe’s manipulative Kool-Aid.

AJ Marechal is a writer and entertainment journalist based in Los Angeles. She has held editorial positions at Allure, Harper's Bazaar and Playboy, and most recently served as Variety's TV reporter. At Variety, AJ covered all aspects of the televisio...More

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